Birmingham East Midlands Godwin Commonwealth Games Derby Landmark

Funding is being lined up for plans to build Derby’s tallest building, our event has heard. Matt Chandler, Development Manager at Godwin Developments. our recent Birmingham event that the company is close to securing a funder for its Landmark scheme. Funding will ‘hopefully’ be in place by mid-November for the 17-storey build to rent scheme, which would be the highest yet developed in Derby.

Chandler said Godwin Developments, who’re set to share further information at November’s East Midlands Development Plans Conference, are also at pre-application stage on a £90m scheme to regenerate an old industrial site at Lowesmoor in Worcester city centre, where it has formed a joint venture with a local landowner to develop a mixed use scheme. The 400,000 sq ft scheme includes 30,000 sq ft of offices, a boutique hotel and open market sale housing
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He said of the scheme: “There is a huge amount of industry in Worcester which the council are keen to bring forward as residential. Frankly they need better quality housing in the city centre.”

Further afield, he said the company is looking at opportunities across the Midlands and on the South Coast in what he described as the “very busy and profitable” roadside retail sector: “The market has changed quite substantially. People are no longer prepared to accept £2 for a naff sandwich: they want a hot food selection and a coffee.”

Birmingham’s residents are too reticent about discussing the ongoing transformation of the city, the council’s recently appointed Chief Executive Dawn Baxendale said: “Birmingham is an amazing place and people in the west midlands don’t talk about it.”

A large swathe of Birmingham city centre is currently being redeveloped including the site of the former main library next to Centenary Square and the nearby but long delayed Arena Central scheme.

And she said the authority wants the 2022 Commonwealth Games athlete’s village, being developed in the city’s Perry Barr neighbourhood, to be an “exemplary residential opportunity”.

A planning application for 3,000 new homes to replace what she described as one of Birmingham’s ‘poorest neighbourhoods’, had been submitted to the council with a decision expected toward the end of this year.

Stuart Rose, Regional Acquisition Manager at Whitbread, told delegates that the company is about to exchange on a new Premier Inn in the city’s Eastside area, which will cater for work taking place on HS2, the first phase of which is due to terminate there.

The company is targeting a number of other areas in Birmingham as new locations for its hotel chain, which has expanded by 250% in last five years, including 4,000 new rooms over the last 12 months alone.

He said Whitbread wants to open a 180-bed hotel at the Arena Central development, and 120 bed Premier Inns at both Snow Hill and the Smithfield, which would cater for visitors to nearby Edgbaston’s cricket ground and private hospitals as well as Birmingham University.

Premier Inn hotels, which take out 25 year leases, are good anchors for mixed use developments because they bring money into the surrounding neighbourhoods, Rose said: “There is a perception that limited service hotels don’t contribute to the local economy. Premier Inn is a quality employer and because it is limited service hotel, 50% of residents go out to eat in local bars and restaurants which in turn creates jobs.”

He said that Premier Inn, which he described as the “largest and fastest growing hotel chain in the UK” is “on track” to hit 85,000 rooms by 2020 and 100,000 soon after.

The UK hotel sector still offered plenty of room for further expansion, he said: “The UK still has lots of relatively poor individual hotels that are under-invested and have high room rates.”

Ed Ellerington, Director of recently launched build to rent developer Packaged Living, backed by Palmer Capital, said the real estate sector’s traditional reliance on opportunities is ‘nonsense’. He said: “The idea in the real estate is that its opportunity-led and you can’t really target (sites). No other sector in the world does that. We look at where the growth is and where people want to be.”

He said Packaged Living seeks out city and town centres locations for private rented developments which are close to at least one university, a training college, two bluechip employers, a main line rail link and major road connections.

 

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